7Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea ~ "Dagwood of the Mind"
by Dash O'Pepper
Author's Notes: This is a parody of the second season Columbo episode "Dagger of the Mind" (#2.04) by Richard Levinson & William Link; teleplay by Jackson Gillis.
• While I adore Richard Basehart as Admiral Nelson, his portrayal of washed-up actor Nicolas Frame in that Columbo episode was so over-the-top that I wanted to explain away its existence, and have a bit of fun at the same time.
• For any Richard Basehart fans who would enjoy seeing him in a dramatic portrayal of a down-on-his-luck actor, check out the fourth season Naked City episode "Dust Devil on a Quiet Street" (#4.11) by Anthony Lawrence; teleplay by Anthony Lawrence & Howard Rodman, which is running for free on IMDbTV (as of April 2020).
• This story may also be found on AO3.
"By the pricking of my thumbs…" he muttered, as his head lolled in a fitful sleep. "…this way comes—"
He jerked awake, feeling the creeping spread of liquid along his thigh.
Thankfully, that shot one theory to hell, he thought, righting the half-empty glass he was still holding in his hand. He reached toward the coffee table, grabbing a handful of deli napkins to dab up the mess before it soaked into the sofa cushions—never mind his uniform trousers; at least a damned spot on them would come out.
Harriman Nelson's hands shook involuntarily, as fragments of a nightmare came looming from the recesses of his memory. It hadn't been the spilled soda that woke him: that was what pulled him back from the abyss.
"Get a hold of yourself," he chastised himself. He was a man of science, of logic, of plain old-fashioned common sense. A dream was nothing more than a confused jumble of the day's actions, mixed with a healthy (or sometimes unhealthy) dash of the id. His stomach grumbled in painful acknowledgement.
He usually followed Jamie's advice to the letter about his diet, but there were times when his cravings got the better of him. Tonight had been one of those. He'd gone all out for this dinner: a triple-decker Reuben piled high with corned beef and sauerkraut, as well as heaping helpings of coleslaw and potato salad on the side. The Kosher deli he'd gone to in Ventura even carried Dr Brown's old-fashioned cream soda from New York.
Calming himself, he picked up the remains of his dinner, and headed for the kitchen. While he knew he'd probably pay dearly tomorrow with a massive case of heartburn for this evening's gastronomic indulgence, he wanted to believe that the chimera he couldn't quite shake was going to make a good down payment.
He attempted to put the dream's fragments into some kind of coherence. He was Macbeth. No, that isn't right, is it? Although, he did distinctly remember seeing three witches—one even mentioned Seaview. In the dream, he was an actor—and a washed-up ham at that, he harrumphed—playing the role of Macbeth. And there was Lady Macbeth, too. She might have once been attractive, but it looked like she'd applied her stage-makeup with a trowel in a valiant, but futile, attempt to hold back the hands of time; and he'd never before heard a Scottish burr with that type of inflection.
There was a murder, or was it two? But why would he want to kill Terry-Thomas and Peter Sellers? Then there was the shrewd detective in the rumpled raincoat who kept doing a James Cagney impersonation ⁽¹⁾. The man was vaguely familiar. Nelson distinctly remembered that the policeman had one glass eye; he recalled how it moved out of rhythm with the other. He tried to remember where he'd seen the police lieutenant before. NASA, wasn't it? At General Martin Peterson's tenth anniversary party: Sammy Davis, Jr. ⁽²⁾
The way the mind plays tricks on you, he laughed. Now, if he could only get the cloying sweet smell of cream soda out of his trousers.
~ Finis ~
© 2016 Dash O'Pepper
Footnotes: ⁽¹⁾ A tip-and-a-wink to the character "Will" from the film Robin and the 7 Hoods by David R. Schwartz.
⁽²⁾ For those who recognize the reference, it's from the second season I Dream of Jeannie episode "The Greatest Entertainer in the World" (#2.23) by Sidney Sheldon.
Disclaimers: Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea is a registered trademark of Twentieth Century-Fox Television Inc., Cambridge Productions Inc., and Irwin Allen Properties LLC. All rights reserved. This work of fanfiction is not meant in any way to infringe on copyrights already held by these companies, their subsidiaries, and/or their estates. The plot of this fanfiction is the property of its author.